Six prize Hawaiian stories of the Kilohana Art League — A Closer Reading

Domestic Details and Material Life

The opening of Emma L. Dillingham's “Kalani” focuses on a worn coat: “patch had already been placed upon patch, nearly every one differing in material and color.” The narrative lingers on the fabric—cotton twill, blue flannel—and the old woman's careful mending. This attention to mending and reuse reflects a household economy where clothing is scarce and valued. The coat becomes a symbol of the couple's circumstances, and the dialogue mixes English with Hawaiian exclamations like “Auwe, pela?” Such domestic scenes offer a counterpoint to more dramatic episodes elsewhere in the collection.

Work, Risk, and Humor in the Koa Forest

In “The Story of a Brave Woman,” the narrator describes felling “mammoth koas” and hauling them with cattle. The work is dangerous: an axe flies back, cutting a man's head; a native herb bandage is applied. Yet the tone is often wry, as when Joe wishes he could “get his foot cut off” to be invalided. The bullock-cart ride to Wailuku for the Fourth of July is a set piece of comic chaos—cattle tangle in chains, the load tips, and the narrator notes “never was more fun in a basket of monkeys.” The humor coexists with precise descriptions of logging techniques and landscape.

Language, Dialect, and Cultural Markers

The text preserves Hawaiian words and a localized English dialect. A sailor speaks in a compressed pidgin: “Caught plenty on 'em… Down in Wyhee plenty of gals and bananas.” The transcriber's note explains that “sailor's cant/slang” and “Hawaiian English” have been retained. Elsewhere, terms like lunapais (overseers) and hale (house) appear without translation, assuming reader familiarity. This linguistic texture suggests the stories were written for a local audience comfortable with code-switching, not for mainland readers needing glosses.

Readers should note that the excerpts represent only a portion of the collection; the complete book includes six stories, among them a legend of Haleakala and a tale titled “Peleg Chapman's Sharks.” The surviving text retains typographical corrections but preserves the original's Hawaiian vocabulary and dialect. Approaching these stories as artifacts of a specific literary society—rather than as a comprehensive portrait of Hawaii—allows their local details and narrative voices to speak most clearly.

That rainy afternoon, the Kilohana stories felt like listening to neighbors through a thin wall—voices carrying work and legend together. The damp air outside seemed to seep into their lines about taro fields. Later, reaching for something else, I found The Fascinating Stranger, and Other Stories — Background and Themes and recognized that same quiet ache of place, though the rain had stopped by then.